The Wisdom Culture Series
The Wisdom Culture Series is published by Wisdom Publications in association with the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). Under the guidance of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the series provides English-language readers with key works for the study and cultivation of the Mahayana Buddhist path, especially works of masters within the lineage of Lama Tsongkhapa and the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism. “Wisdom culture,” an expression frequently used by Lama Yeshe, is a Dharma culture rooted in wisdom and compassion. The Wisdom Culture Series is intended to support this vision by transmitting the timeless wisdom of the Dharma through authoritative and accessible publications.
“What we normally understand as the meaning of ‘culture’ is the relative mind or spirit, the collective illusions of a certain land or people. It actually has nothing to do with the wisdom truth of Dharma. If we stretch the meaning we could say that Dharma is the ‘culture’ of our progressively developing wisdom. I think the meeting of East and West could be worked progressively towards a finer level of understanding. I think we must work toward a wisdom culture.”
—Lama Yeshe
Lama Thubten Yeshe was born in Tibet in 1935. At the age of six, he entered Sera Monastic University in Tibet where he studied until 1959, when as Lama Yeshe himself has said, “In that year the Chinese kindly told us that it was time to leave Tibet and meet the outside world.” Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, together as teacher and disciple since their exile in India, met their first Western students in 1967. By 1971, they settled at Kopan, a small hamlet near Kathmandu in Nepal. In 1974, the Lamas began touring and teaching in the West, which would eventually result in The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition. Lama Yeshe died in 1984.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche was a Tibetan Buddhist scholar and meditator who for over 30 years oversaw the spiritual activities of the extensive worldwide network of centers, projects, and services that form the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) which he founded with Lama Thubten Yeshe. Born in the Mount Everest region of Thami in 1946, Lama Zopa was recognized soon afterward by His Holiness Trulshik Rinpoche and five other lamas as the reincarnation of the great yogi Kunsang Yeshe. Rinpoche was taken under the care of FPMT’s founder Lama Thubten Yeshe, soon after leaving Tibet, in Buxa Duar, India, in the early 1960s. Rinpoche was with Lama Yeshe until 1984 when Lama Yeshe passed away and Lama Zopa Rinpoche took over as spiritual director of FPMT. Lama Zopa died in April of 2023. Discover more of Lama Zopa’s books here.
More Information: https://wisdomexperience.org/wisdom-culture-series/